Geographer and artist Trevor Paglen has spent a career tracking the purposefully hidden cogs of U.S. military Secret Ops.

Described by critic Paul Schmelzer as “part Gerhard Richter painting, part Bigfoot sighting,” Paglen’s imagery is both a best-attempt documentary of secret fragments that can be seen and a euphemism for all else that is not.

Paglen‘s first monograph, Invisible: Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes, published this month by Aperture puts onto paper – sometimes in oblique forms – the rendition flights, military satellites and black site prisons of unseen martial systems. The book draws viewers into a world infiltrated by the classified acts of U.S. government and intelligence.

“I think of my visual work as an exploration of political epistemology,” said Paglen in a recent interview with Joerg Colberg, “The politics of how we know what we think we know. [An exploration] filled with all the contradictions, dead ends, moments of revelation, and confusion that characterize our collective ability to comprehend the world around us in general.”

Read on for Paglen’s take on the secret worlds that surrounds us.

Between Earth and Jupiter (500 million miles away) there are about five miles of thick, breathable atmosphere. In contrast, there are upwards of 40 miles of thick atmosphere between an observer and the sites depicted in this series. Above, a chemical and biological weapons proving ground, Dugway, Utah. Photo taken from 42 miles.

Among Paglen’s many projects is Limit Telephotography for which he uses astrophotography to capture images of aircraft deep within U.S. desert military bases.

Through desert heat and dust, at about 60 miles the image breaks down entirely, “The atmosphere doesn’t cooperate, color falls apart,” says Paglen. “You begin to see the limits of your own vision.” This obfuscation is a metaphor Paglen embraces. His photographs are specters of the Global War on Terror and they’re the closest we’ve come to seeing the most secretive aspects of this most abstract of wars.

Paglen photographed reconnaissance satellites using telescopes and large-format cameras on a computer-guided mechanical mounts. The Other Night Sky, above, shows trails in the sky created by the sunlight reflected on the hulls of classified spacecraft.

Paglen, who holds a Ph.D. in Geography from UC Berkeley, spent almost two years working with a team of computer scientists at the Eyebeam Art + Technology Center to develop a software model to describe the orbital motion of classified spacecraft.

The Other Night Sky, 189 shots of covert satellites, plays on artistic traditions of pictorial landscape but exposes the Western deserts for what they’ve always been – contested sites of military engagement and R&D.

From left to right: Patch commemorating a flight test of a B-2 "Spirit" stealth bomber. The Latin phrase Gustatus Similis Pullus translates as "Tastes like chicken"; Stealth "Bird of Prey" patch refers to a Boeing aircraft tested between 1992 and 1999, and declassified in the early 2000s; Dragon patch was used by the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office, a secret unit until the early 1990s. "Dragon" was a code name used for the infrared imaging capabilities on "Crystal," advanced KH-11 reconnaissance satellites.

Evoking cult insignia, Paglen’s 2006 work Symbology collates the patches of a military trying to define itself without describing its activities.

In a 2009 lecture, Paglen retold a service-person’s summary of working in the Black-world: “When you do the work I do, you have to look your mother in the eye and lie.” Paglen attended alumni gatherings of former black-world employees and witnessed repeated “crises of language” as men were awarded for significant achievements – none of which were detailed.

Paglen has also revealed ghost identities of board members to front companies involved in the U.S. rendition program, and listed thousands of code-names – some dark and comic – of classified military programs active between 2001 and 2007.

Aviation authorities provided flight records and N-Numbers for planes, some of which were used for transporting military personnel involved in the rendition program. Many of the planes had been traded through front companies. Above, a plane labeled N654BA, serial number BL-54. This plane was sold to the United States Air Force in 1982, but to an unusual outfit: DET 1, AFEREG.

The heavily regulated aviation industry also provides a wealth of documents – airfield fueling agreements, purchasing histories and flight records. Paglen has deduced the itineraries not only of detainees but also their federally-employed interrogators.

The final aspect of his work – which Paglen is always keen to emphasize – is that of political performance. Paglen insists on his right to venture to the edge of restricted sites to make photographs, that those expeditions become activism.

The performance, however, is not without its hazards. “Once, I got lost in the middle of the desert and had to follow the north star to find the dirt road where my truck was parked a few miles away,” Paglen told Colberg. “Another time I got stuck in quicksand for two days.”

Trevor Paglen (born in Maryland, 1974) received a Ph.D. in geography, as well as his BA, from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is represented by Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco, and Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne, Germany. He lives and works in New York and Oakland, California.